[Wowfunhappy]

> The projections are that population decline will hit the whole world, it's just hitting developed nations first.

And that's a serious problem for the rest of the world! It's not a problem for the US, or any other country rich enough that people are clamoring to immigrate.

Sure, the world will eventually run out of people I guess. But there are so many people who want to come here, that time is exceedingly far away. And population decline is okay if it happens very slowly.

Edit: I'm not against the other policies you listed, I just don't think we need them because of "population decline" specifically. I'm not convinced they would even help with population decline, because families with higher incomes--ie more access to childcare, housing, and so on--are having fewer kids just like everyone else. Immigration, by contrast, really will quite transparently address the need for more people.

[dgoldstein0]

The trouble is by the time we decide whether we need to solve the problem, we may be 20 years or more too late to implement a solution. I.e. if we need a larger labor force to keep social security solvent, we need those children born 18-25 years beforehand so they grow up and start paying in.

Anyhow yeah I don't think policy is the only reason we're in this bind, but let's be honest that we do not make it easy to be parents of young children. Various trends exacerbate this, like the fact that it's now more common to live in different cities than most of your family - which means less free childcare from families. But also many people get their idea of family sizes from what they grew up with and what their friends and family are doing, so the decline in children per woman is going to be rather sticky.